Mid-day Sunday round-up and Open Thread

If you’ve ever wondered why I have a posy of flowers as the theme picture for my round-ups, it’s because my round-up is like a bouquet of interesting ideas, all bundled together in one place — kind of like that little posy of pretty flowers. So, here come the flowers….

Islam is not a religion like the others; the jihadis and their M3 are followers of a totalitarian creed which far from being a “religion of peace” (the stupidest meme to come from the Bush administration) is a cult of death and slavery, of total submission. This is a “religion” that has undergone no enlightenment, and what reformation has taken place has been to push it back closer to its 7th century origins in the Arabian peninsula. It treats women like garbage, has a severe sexual code, has no compunction about killing anybody who transgresses that code especially women and gay men–although homosexual practices and pedophilia are rampant throughout the Muslim world–and sees Jews and Christians as prime targets for forced conversion, kidnapping, enslavement, other forms of subjugation, and murder. I should note that if Jews and Christians are not immediately available, M3 is willing to kill fellow Muslims, as we see, for example, right now in Syria and Iraq.

Tolerance is not a Muslim concept. Islam is the enemy of tolerance–not the mythical “radical” Islam, but straightforward everyday vanilla Islam is an enemy of tolerance.

If you go to a Muslim country, you must abide by Muslim rules and practices or Muslims will get offended and see your murder as justified; if Muslims come to your country, you must abide by Muslim rules and practices or Muslims will get offended and see your murder as justified.

Read the rest here. This is the kind of straight speaking we need about a death cult ideology that has American centered in its cross-hairs.

Yesterday, the N.Y. Post ran an excerpt from Edward Klein’s new book, Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas, about the relationship between the Clintons and the Obamas. According to Klein’s sources, they despise each other. I have no doubt about but that this is true. Four prima donnas crammed into the public eye are going to hate each other in their battle for the spotlight. Moreover, the by-play between the four of them rings true when one considers what we already know about these four characters.

Today’s N.Y. Post excerpt purports to quote one of her anonymous “top legal advisers” who contends that the Benghazi cover-up was all Obama’s idea and that Hillary only reluctantly went along with it. I don’t believe a word of that. Cover-ups are Hillary’s stock in trade and I’m certain that she and Obama were equal partners in this crime.

I’ll be interested in hearing the spin on this story when one of Obama’s anonymous “top legal advisers” shoots back with Obama’s version of this conspiracy to cover up the administration’s despicable behavior before and during the Benghazi massacre. In this telling, of course, it will all be Hillary’s idea.

Either way, Hillary and Obama will have convicted themselves of conniving to mislead the American people in order to win the White House in 2012.

***

Thomas Lifson thinks that, just maybe, the scathing editorial that the Chicago Tribune (former home of David Axelrod) wrote about the IRS cover-up might signal that the dam is finally breaking on the logjam the drive-by media has hidden behind so as to avoid talking about both the IRS’s crime and its cover-up. I hope he’s right. Even Lifson, though, concedes that the IRS still holds the power: “The IRS holds unique power over corporate America.”

The only way that the drive-by media can report on the cover-up is for all of them to go into it together. Standing alone, each is vulnerable to IRS manipulation. Together, though, they’re pretty invulnerable, especially since each can report on the IRS’s harassment of the others.

It’s amazing what happens when you take Doonesbury cartoons from the Watergate era and, keeping most of the original text, simply change out a few words to make each cartoon relevant, not to Watergate, but to IRS-gate.

Enjoy these revised cartoons while you can. I suspect that, very soon, the attorneys representing Gary Trudeau will come knocking at the door and politely say, “Please remove these copyright infringing cartoons, or else.” There’s an argument to be made that political parodies constitute fair use, but the argument is only as good as the judge hearing the case.

***

The media may be trying to avoid the IRS scandal, but the IRS is not helping, since it keeps digging deeper holes for itself. It began when Lois Lerner’s computer turned out to have “crashed” within weeks of learning that Congress was going to investigate gross malfeasance which saw the IRS trying to destroy any groups or individuals who could interfere with Obama’s presidency and reelection. We then learned that six other relevant computers conveniently crashed then too.

With an email backup company on the scene, it looked as if the IRS would have to ‘fess up and produced the emails . . . except that it turns out that the IRS has another cover-up in its place: After all seven computers conveniently crashed just on the cusp of a Congressional investigation, the IRS cancelled its contract with the email backup service.

All of which leads to the inevitable next question: “Was Sonasoft required to purge its records? If so, why? What did the IRS do with the backup records?”

***

Remember the uproar when George H.W. Bush was impressed by a computerized cash register? He was rightly impressed, because it was a new technology, but the media used the story to show Bush as an out-of-touch rich man. They couldn’t make enough of the story.

The media’s changed a lot since then. Reporters are assiduously ignoring the bizarre spectacle of the fabulously wealthy Hillary Clinton trying to paint herself as financially struggling. While she’s backed off her risible claim that she and Bill were dead broke when they left the White House, she’s now saying that she “isn’t truly well off.” Coming from a women sitting on tens of millions of dollars, that gaffe should be on every front page . . . but it’s not, of course.

Sadie took a quiz on Quizifed (and no, I’m not providing the link) and was unsurprised to learn that she’s a conservative. What did surprise her is the vicious, ignorant terms in which it describes “right wingers”:

Wow! We conservatives are “regressive,” we hate human-kind, and we become anarcho-capitalists or fascists. Whoever came up with that definition seems to be unaware of the fact that conservatives actually believe that individuals are wonderful, and should be free to unleash their energy and creativity to better humankind. We realize that the best system for harnessing both the good and bad in people’s energy and initiative is capitalism, that it’s the Left that lives in the past, and that both Naziism and Italian fascism were socialist (i.e., Leftist). Were I to re-write their text, it would say:

“Right wing” (also known as “conservative”) refers to an ideology that believes that people, not the government, are the source of innovation and wealth creation, and that the free market best harnesses people’s gifts, while providing an appropriate, positive outlet for innovation, competitiveness, and even greed. They fear that increased government power can lead to socialism, as happened with the Nazis and Italian fascists; to communism, as happened in Cuba, China, and the former Soviet Union; to totalitarian personality cults, as happened in North Korea; or to military juntas, as happened in Argentina. Smaller government, on the other hand, allows people maximum freedom and wealth creation, which benefits all citizens.

Curious now, about how the Quizified team would describe “left wingers,” I took the quiz, responding as a good Leftie should. The results were very different:

Isn’t that anodyne? Leftists believe so strongly in people’s goodness that they also believe that the only way to control this goodness is through massive government strength. Moreover, “Taken to its logical conclusion, left wing politics becomes some form of socialism.”

No wonder uninformed, brainwashed people shy away from describing themselves as conservative.

A school in Sweden has revealed that every single girl in one of its classes is a victim of female genital mutilation. There is nothing good about FGM. The procedure is unsanitary and primitive, and can lead to infection and hemorrhaging. The sole purpose behind the procedure is to destroy women’s sexual pleasure. Depending on how extreme it is, the girl can end up with no clitoris; no labia; neither clitoris nor labia, and, in extreme cases, with her vaginal entry sewn almost entirely closed. It is the essence of evil misogyny.

It’s also nothing like circumcision, which has long been known to decrease dangerous diseases (including AIDS) in both men and their female partners. It’s not a painful procedure, with many infants sleeping through it. And here’s the kicker: we finally know that, rather than decreasing sexual pleasure, it can increase it:

One of the other reasons often cited for opposing circumcision — decreased penile sensitivity in circumcised men — is not borne out by science.

As researchers studied whether circumcision helped prevent the spread of HIV, they were able to conduct far better studies than before on penile sensitivity.

One inquiry included thousands of Kenyan men who were split into two random groups, only one of which would have its participants circumcised.

With a large sample of previously uncircumcised men now willing to be circumsized for the study, scientists finally had a basis for comparing sensitivities re: circumcision, and their findings belied the conventional wisdom.

“Overall, the circumcised men actually report that their penises are more sensitive [after circumcision], and that they have an easier time reaching orgasm,” the authors wrote.
Further, in a collective review of 10 studies using almost 20,000 men as subjects, scientists “did not see any differences between circumcised and uncircumcised men in terms of sexual desire, pain during sex, premature ejaculation, problems with erections, or problems with orgasms.”

Score another point for Biblical wisdom.

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Libby

I could not care less about the snits amongst the Obama and Clinton couples (four repellent human beings), but the part about Hillary being “reluctant” about the Benghazi cover-up is no more believable than Lerner’s hard drive crash.. There is rumored to be another person who was reluctant to go along with Obama that night: AFRICOM Gen. Carter Ham. He chose to ignore the stand down order and was immediately relieved of duty. Hillary could have tried to get Obama to save her people (which she appears not to have done), and she certainly could have resigned in protest. She owns it as much as Obama.

Kevin_B

What I am going to say in this post, which will likely be lengthy, might seem like ranting or complaining to some of you, but since this is an open thread and I would like to get some of this off mind, I am going to anyway. Some of the issues I am going to speak about are the same I have posted about in last year’s “Your 18-year old self” thread.

For starters: I would love to say a few words about Islam and it’s nature, but people much smarter and better skilled at writing than me (like the DiploMad) have already said much, if not everything I could say, and much better than I ever could. So, I will not for now. Maybe at another occasion.

To continue….
I keep having these weird moments where time and again, when I am thinking or brooding on some issue, that same day or shortly afterwards something that relates to the particular issue shows up in the news or somewhere on the internet, for example over here at Bookworm Room. This time is it he stupid political ideology quizz thingy Bookworm posted.

For quite a while now, I seem to have been struggling with the issue of political ideology and labeling. It seems to me that I just cannot find a political or ideological ‘home’, feel at home within any political or societal ideology or movement, or find a label that I am completely comfortable with. With regards to that stupid quizz, I cannot stand behind either of the original descriptions, while Bookworm’s description of the right seems closer to something I can stand behind.

It, however, seems to be that within what can, very broadly, be descriped as the ‘right wing’ or the ‘conservative’ movement, a wide range of thoughts and opinions exist. I think you could rightly speak of a ‘conservative rainbow’. I have, for example, noticed many differences between the ‘conservatism’ here at Bookworm Room and that at many other sources. It is not easy to really make sense of, let alone tease out what the true meaning of conservatism is. Honestly, it often seems to be to a large extent self-defined.

I really, really don’t know what I should call myself. I don’t think I really have the ‘credentials’ to call myself a conservative. I don’t think I am or can be called a conservative. I way too often disagree with conservative persons and organizations on any number of issues for that to be even remotely possible. That is not too say that I like the progressives/the left much either – I usually disagree with many things coming from the left. Neither do I qualify as a libertarian, at least not in a pure or a nutty form. Perhaps my way of viewing the world could be best described as liberalism in it’s classical form (rather than the progressive leftist form) or a ‘fusionist’ form of thought, but I am not satisfied with those labels either. I often feel like I am ‘too left for the right’ and ‘too right for the left’, so to speak.

I tend to be a fairly contrarian person that prefers to go at things ‘his way’. I despise the term ‘rebel’, but it might nonetheless be a term applicable to me. Despite all my doubts and insecurities, I have any number of principles, beliefs and opinions about any number of topics. These may very well be a weird and possibly contrarian amalgam or hotch-potch. I used to not really care, but that is well in the past, largely to my dismay. I remain particular to making up my own mind and not subscribing to or aligning myself with any ideology or movement.

I find it all very difficult and confusing. I sometimes feel like I can’t really find a firm foundation or solid ground in this difficult and crazy world, and feel like I am unable to definitively determ where I stand or who I am in this world. Most often, I just try to at least not let it get to me too much, and just be myself.

I often have to think about the old Chinese curse ‘May you live in interesting times’. We certainly live in interesting times. The world is a difficult, disorderly and deeply rotten place, although good things can also be found in said world. I do have a lot of thoughts, views and opinions about goes around in this world we live in. In essence, I am a modern person who does the modern world and modern living, while feeling uneasy about a number of aspects of the modern world. I am also someone who loves the West and many of the things it stands for (or at least things I believe the West stands for). Freedom is something that I do value. And I despise Islam and what it stands for, and I believe to be a very real and dangerous threat to the West and the entire world. That topic is what originally brought me to this website (which, I must say, I have loved from day one).

I had a few topics in mind I would like to voice some opinions on, but I am not going to do it in this post, although I might at another time.

Charles Martel

Kevin B, maybe the finest thing about Bookworm Room is that even when the people here question one another’s reasoning or statements, it’s almost always done seriously and respectfully. I can’t tell you how turned off I get when I visit other conservative blogs only to see discussions rapidly descend into name calling and trollery. That isn’t to say that we haven’t had trolls here from time to time, but I think they’ve always quickly realized how outgunned they are when it comes to holding their own in a discussion with educated (as opposed to indoctrinated) people.

All of this is to say that even though you may feel untethered at times—and you might be surprised how many of us here don’t like being pigeon-holed any more than you do—think of yourself as a ship that has found a harbor at Bookworm Room. It may not be your home port or the port that will become your final destination, but while you are here you are in safe haven.

I find it amusing that so many people thought the media’s bias and problem was their corporate profits and if it “bleeds, it leads” priority.

Well, Afghanistan is bleeding, but it ain’t leading. And it ain’t no freaking corporate profit behind the explanation.

Kevin_B

First of all, thank you for your well-reasoned reply, Mr Martel.

I have also noticed the serious, respectful and civil nature of disagreement, engagement and discussion here at Bookworm Room. Name-calling and trollery are not something often seen here at Bookworm Room – it’s not something I think would go well with the proprietress of this place, or it’s members. To the extent that I have visited ‘liberal’/progressive sites, it seems to me that they often ‘at hominem’, crude, rude and written in a very shrill tone. Name-calling and trollery seem quite common, while many of their members seem fond of using certain four-letter words that I try to avoid using. Unfortunately, name-calling, crude (and not just clear/strong statements), rude language and complete uncivility are now also fairly common at conservative sites. I would guess it is in part a disease of our age, more specificely, a combination of coarsening and a degree of anonimity provided by the internet.

I don’t know whether I would call myself ‘educated’. Given that I have both a Bachelor’s and a Master of Science degree, I guess that technically and statistically, I am – but I also think that I actually know only a little about the mechanations of this world. Even after all that has happened, I still love learning and gaining knowledge, or at I try to still do so. As far as indoctrination goes, as I’ve said previously, I feel most comfortable making up my own mind, whether going with or going against whatever thinkable grain.

I have been noticing lately that the principles and values I believe in, and have believed in for quite some years, haven’t really substantially changed since I started into this counterjihad and conservative stuff. As much as I hate it, I have a definite tendency to be somewhat of a rebelious, non-conformist and contrarian person, as well as possessing a weird hotsch-potsch of views and characteristics. My thoughts and views are and probably will remain for a long-time to come a hotsch-potsch, as well as being cherry-picking. It may very well be a weakness of me, but as you put it, I don’t want to be pigeon-holed into something. I guess at for now I’ll just have to deal with that.

As far as statements on opinions go, I am not going to give a lot for now. Let me just say that I believe it is right to love your region or your country, as well as the culture you belong to and defend what it stands for (or at least, what you believe it stands for). Freedom, whatever meaning that may have a philosophical and practical level, is something I like a lot. At the same time, I also believe there are (or should be) at least some duties and standards in society. Another of my beliefs is that Islam is contrary to everything I like, love, stand for and admire, and that Islam is the antithesis of my values and principles, as well as a natural enemy of my society and my culture, and that I should therefore oppose Islam. Last but not least, I believe that there are some things of value and importance that should be preserved, that should be ‘permanent things’ in a society, and that these things should within just reason be conserved. It is not that I completely oppose change or progress; I just think just reason and consideration of certain things should also be in the equation.

That last point might be to an extent a conservative view point. Perhaps the conservation of ‘permanent things’ and those things of value, as well as the use of discernment with regards to change or progress is in part what conservatism is based on. I remain highly confused with regards to the ‘rainbow’ of conservatism and I really don’t know, not can I define what the definition of true conservatism would be, or what core beliefs you should adhere to in order to call yourself a conservative. Is it even possible? To a large extent, conservatism seems to be self-formed and self-defined. I still very much doubt whether I am a conservative – I have way to many disagreements with conservative people and organizations to be one. I trully have no label that will do. I don’t fit in anywhere, it seems. I’ll just have to deal with it.

As far as my journey goes, and given Mr. Martel’s nautical metaphor… I wonder whether I actually have a home port, let alone a final destination. I may very well be a vessel, destined to be forever adrift on the perilous oceans, without ever moring in a permanent haven. I can’t really explain why, but the nautical metaphor actually had me thinking of Homer’s Odyssey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner today. Both of these old, or even ancient, tales do deal with perilous journeys, although the journeys in these tales do seem to have a destination. I don’t know if I will ever find one, but for now, I am going to have to try to love the journey and deal with it’s perils.

Let me finish with a quote by William Blake.
“What is now proved was once only imagined.
The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbet; watch the roots; the lion, the tiger, the horse, the elephant, watch the fruits.
The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.”